Month: March 2016

Hanas signs service order with Vestas

Posted on by Andrew Morse

Vestas has been awarded a large-scale customised service order in China, by long-term customer Hanas New Energy Group.

The 600 MW firm and unconditional service contract is a customised and flexible solution covering all 250 wind towers over twelve Hanas power plants in Yanchi County of northwestern China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

Since Hanas entered the wind power market in 2011, Vestas has been its exclusive turbine supplier. The Hanas fleet of Vestas turbines totals 600 MW of installed capacity, with several hundred additional MW currently under construction.

The service order comprises a one-year Active Output Management (AOM) 4000 service agreement and a four-year Portfolio Support agreement, which is a flexible Vestas service offering tailor-made to meet specific customer needs.

Mr Ma Fuqiang, President of Hanas Group, notes that “The cooperation and mutual trust between Hanas and Vestas is entering into a new stage with the signing of this customised service contract. It is essential for us to work with companies like Vestas, which is known for its innovative and ground-breaking solutions as well as its proven know-how and solid experience. The service agreement will enable us to improve energy production, enhance service quality, and grow our own service capabilities to a world class quality, hence, reduce the overall cost of energy, extend turbine lifetime and ensure our return of investment”.

President of Vestas Asia Pacific and China, Chris Beaufait, commented “We look forward to continuing the long-term partnership with Hanas Group and to helping them lower the cost of energy through these tailor-made service solutions.”

Vestas has delivered wind energy in 75 countries, with 20,500 personnel all over the world. Wind power from more than 56,800 Vestas wind turbines currently reduces carbon emissions by over 78 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. With over 73 GW of cumulative installed capacity and over 15% of the worldwide wind turbine fleet, Vestas is the world leader in wind energy.

Digital Tsunami produced a video in 2015 dramatically capturing the towers of one Hanas wind farm, in time-lapse sequences and 4K aerials shot from a UAV. We were pleased when this video was screened to the head of Vestas, China and the Danish Ambassador to China, during their visit to Hanas in Yinchuan.

View a low-resolution version of the film at Vimeo

Precision at 25 fps

Posted on by Andrew Morse

Video is powerful.

Video is evocative.

Video is fast.

Whether live, animation or both, video is a sequence of individual images at the rate of 25 frames per second (fps).

When watching video, how many of these frames does a person actually see?

Let’s focus on two examples:

As the Australian broadcast of the Formula One Grand Prix season commences, the local coverage features an interstitial at the start of each commercial break.

This beautifully animated interstitial features an ‘exploded’ technical view of a stylised formula one car and a series of driver’s names.

Amongst the names is Adrian Sutil, who is not on the grid this year.

Does that matter? Will anyone notice? Well, ‘Yes’ to both.

As a professional filmmaker, I believe that every single frame is critical to convey the message evocatively and within the required time frame, (irrespective of whether that is a fifteen second online video, 30 second TVC, three minute corporate, two hour feature film or ten hour miniseries).

Anything that detracts from the message or the flow has to be removed.

A director has to be focused at a macroscopic level. Many times in edits, an errant frame has been visible to me, yet missed by an extremely experienced editor.

Even at 25 fps, an individual frame is noted subconsciously. This was the premise of ‘subliminal’ advertising in the 70’s, which has returned via intensely rapid cutting in TVCs and music videos.

In the case of a TVC or interstitial, the audience may see it repeatedly and as it becomes more familiar, notice more.

So, when the audience sees it, we need to be sure that every frame is pixel perfect.

Another example is a corporate film for Hanas New Energy. We shot 4K UAV aerials of Vestas wind towers on a remote windfarm.

Once the short film was assembled, it became clear to me that in order to ensure a smooth flow, it was necessary to match the position of the blades in edits.

At every cut between two similar shots, the position if the blades was matched precisely on the most prominent wind tower.

While few viewers will be conscious of this, it certainly made for a more coherent film.

It has often been said that the most effective editing and the most effective music (are so integral, that they) are not noticed.

If anything is distracting, the film has not achieved its goal.

Video is precision at 25 fps!

 

 


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